Improbable fauna, impossible flora, and—oh my—the sky's started melting. Yep, looks like you're in a World Of Chaos.

This setting is a bizarre mixture of elements from our world thrown into a blender, with a few squirts of lemon and a pinch of LSD. Everything comes together in outlandish and unpredictable combinations. Bright colors, strange creatures, and total disregard for logic are all in play. Anything can and will happen.

It may be the result of a Mushroom Samba, or be All Just a Dream of someone with a particularly vivid imagination. But if it's real, the characters will need a lot of luck, and their intuition will be more valuable than intellect. Worlds of Chaos are places of great whimsy and danger, much of which stems from the inability to comprehend what's at work in them. In this respect, they're like The Fair Folk in the form of a place.

The realm of Dream in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, being the world where dreams happen. His sister Delirium's realm, even more so. To elaborate, The Dreaming is where your mind goes every night when you fall asleep. It has a sort of logic of its own, but the laws of physics are more like guidelines. Delirium's realm is where your mind goes when you're crazy, and what little is seen of it is pure stream-of-consciousness chaos.

Cool World: The Toon world is basically a chaotic parody of the human world, with Cartoon Physics and constant madness and disorder. A human cop who's been there for the past 50 years still prefers it over his experience in the Second World War.

Ironically, the Courts of Chaos in The Chronicles of Amber are NOT this. Sure, maybe the sun and moon circle each other in the sky, casting night and day on opposite sides of a band of twilight, but that doesn't mean it's not consistent.

Natural law in the Courts is such that this could easily be implemented; it isn't - in fact, ongoing efforts are made to keep things sorted out — because people live there. (Also why the Courts and Amber are sited some distance away from what they represent.) The Pit the Courts hover over, being a well of continual creation and its antithesis, comes closer to the trope. That said, most places too close to the Courts are too influenced by entropy to get a really satisfying level and form of continual change — it's real estate about a third of the way out towards Amber the trope seems to apply best to.

More Minds demonstrates what happens when absolutely everyone gains the power of Reality Warping. It's almost impossible to die, and you'll always have everything you want and need. This is not a good thing.

A rare positive example of this can be found in the first installment of Ted Dekker's Circle series. Before humankind becomes corrupted by sin and Falls from Grace, God does this sort of thing frequently — switching the sky and sea in their places, changing the world's colors — when he's in a playful mood.

In the Animorphs prequel book The Andalite Chronicles, Elfangor, Esplin 9466,note better known by his later title: Visser Three, and Loren accidentally create one when they all attempt to use the Time Matrix to return home at the same time while all participants were starved of oxygen and freezing to death. Since no place in the universe matched the multiple inputs the Time Matrix was receiving, it created a new universe described as a nonsensical patchwork of the Yeerk homeworld, the Andalite homeworld, and suburban America.

This part of the book gets substantially weirder in the next Chronicles title, The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, where it's revealed that Esplin was born and raised on a ship's Yeerk Pool and has never actually been to the Yeerk homeworld. So it's probably not a good idea to look too closely at the Yeerk parts of the mish-mash world.

Steven Brusts's To Reign in Hell, a Twice-Told Tale of Paradise Lost. Heaven is a bubble of order carved out of chaos by the first living creatures. They're always at the ready to beat back the chaos when it starts to encroach.

A few examples of stuff found in the In-Between: yellow geometric shapes that eat each other, flying knees, disembodied mouths that eat themselves, suspended pathways "with the texture of polished polyurethane", windows that open on to horrible screams, undulating noodles, vortexes of pudding... all floating randomly in a void with infinite dimensions that causes synesthesia.

The Infinite Improbability Drive from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy can have these effects. When Ford and Arthur are accidentally picked up by the Heart of Gold, they find themselves in what seems to be Southend, but the sea stays still and the buildings wash up and down, Arthur's limbs start drifting away, Ford starts turning into a penguin, and they ask for help from a passing man with five heads crawling up a wall.

Daemon Worlds in Warhammer 40,000 are literally worlds of Chaos, where the laws of nature do not apply and everything is governed by the will of the Chaos Gods and their daemons, which is VERY bad because the moods and desires of Daemons change more often than you would think possible.

Limbo in Planescape is another literal chaos world, a roiling mixture of all the elements that forms a vast primordial soup out of which emerge the strangest damn things. Order can be imposed temporarily by the willpower and imagination of sentient beings—but that just means that you really need to pay attention.

Arcadia is so defined by chaos that the True Fae stake their existence on constant conflict with one another for more glories and titles; if they don't, they fade away into the background and are eventually undone. The game book describes it something like this (paraphrasing): "Arcadia is a place where your wishes come true. In other words, it greatly resembles Hell."

The Realm of Discord from Sentinels of the Multiverse is another dimension where the laws of physics can change on a whim. One moment you're fast, the next you're slow, and remember to watch out for exploding bubbles.

Video Games

While the later Super Mario Bros. games tried to establish a viable, somewhat consistent Wonderland, the first one just plunged you right into a world where you were a plumber of Italian descent who must rescue a "princess Toadstool" by defeating a turtle-dragon while killing evil walking mushrooms with eyes, turtles with wings, carnivore plants growing out of green pipes and other similar enemies. Oh, and if you eat a mushroom which comes out of a shining floating block with a question sign, you grow bigger, and if you pick a flower, you can shoot bouncing fireballs. Jumping stars, climbable beanstalks, walking on clouds and jumping several times your height ensue.

Inverted with Seido, which still has bizarre alien geometry. (It's torus-shaped and made of floating rectangles connected by bridges which make perfect lines.)

In an old Macintosh children's game called The Manhole, you could climb a beanstalk growing out of the titular manhole: at the very top, you find a forest at night, in the middle of which is a tower that's actually a chess piece sitting in the corner of a vast network of underground canals—which you only realise when you reach the top of the tower. With the aid of a gondola-rowing elephant, you can use the canals to pay a visit to a walrus captain who operates an elevator that somehow arrives in a sunken ship, or you can carry on rowing and find yourself in the teacup of a talking rabbit who lives inside a fire hydrant just across from the Manhole.

Said sunken ship can also be reached by climbing down the beanstalk, thereby making the whole thing circular. And there's a door on the sunken ship that takes you into a room full of flowers. Plus if you go inside the fire hydrant house, you can use a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to go back up to the tower.

Cosmic Osmo, by the same developers, is built on the same trope (but IN SPACE). Said developers were later responsible for the Myst series. This explains a lot.

Possibly the Wario Land series, as a spinoff of Super Mario Bros. For example, the Big Board level, where every single thing that happens relies on the dice blocks found in the level, and getting certain numbers can result in anything from being struck by lightning to enemies appearing to being set on fire.

Speaking of Alice in Wonderland, there also was an eponymousCommodore 64 game which featured a world which was a mix of all the nonsense from both original books plus some extra nonsense added, like a house inside a chess board inside a house inside a bath machine inside a house inside another house which is located underground. You may read a Let's Play of this game here.

Endermen in Minecraft, given enough time, will inevitably turn the world into something along these lines with their block moving abilities. See this video for the damage endermen can cause over a period of 3 years on a server.

Final Fantasy IX has "Memoria", a mindscape created above the Iifa tree where Zidane and his party face off against Kuja in the final disc; it's a jumble of scenes and buildings gathered from the collective memory of the entire planet, where it's possible to walk through a giant, city-destroying eyeball into the ruins of a town it just attacked, walk up a staircase leading into space, pass through a waterfall and find yourself swimming through an ancient coral reef, or climb a ladder that overlooks the birth of the planet itself. Thankfully, Garland's around to explain what's happening.

The final world of Kingdom Hearts follows this trope. The world is made of bits and pieces of destroyed worlds mixed in with lots of darkness to hold things together.

I Wanna Be the Guy is visually an amalgamation of multiple video games, so it's no wonder that there's wildly different areas with often no logical connection between them.

Yume Nikki. Somewhat justified in that it's a dream, but even as far as dreams go it's weird.

This is the schtick of Mira, the 'continent of illusions' from Baten Kaitos.

The "End of the World" stage in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Every stage features a different character to play as, and different levels altogether, there are giant wormholes that warp the colors while simultaneously vacuuming you into them, monsters made of lava and purple stuff attack you at any given moment, the environment changes from lava to forest to temple to desert at a moment's notice, and it is more or less designed to freak you out and confuse you.

In Thief: The Dark Project, any place messed with by the Trickster tends to be like this. A forest inside the house? Doors that lead nowhere? Rooms that look like they came straight out of an Escher painting? Windows that open to the void of space? One level of his very prominently features a river that flows uphill (including reverse-waterfalls), and at one point flows along the ceiling.

In a puzzle game Back to Bed you are a subconscious of a narcoleptic sleepwalker creating safe paths through his dreams for him. The dream landscape is inspired by Escher and Dali.

One interpretation of the very, very disjointed level design in Dark Souls II hinges on this aspect. It's nearly impossible to explain how one can fall into a giant whirlpool in the middle of a lake, end up in a dark underground sanctuary with titanic pillars and an enormous glowing crack in the sky, emerge from said cavern into a beautiful seaside town, travel dozens of miles to a drowned city by walking for five minutes through an underground passageway, descend below sea level into a cavern which happens to be AT sea level, and most mind boggling of all, ascend through an unseen elevator behind a giant windmill-laden tower in order to reach a sinking iron fortress...in the middle of a vast sea of lava which, if it's any indication, happens to be above cloud level.

Dragon Age features the Fade, a parallel realm to the mundane world where minds go when they dream. It is the realm of abstract entities; Spirits and Demons, and is shaped entirely by will, unbound by rules of physics like the mundane world. Mages are specially attuned to it, able to essentially have lucid dreams when they sleep normally, and can also enter the fade consciously through magical means. They are also especially prone to demonic possession, which is one of the main reasons mages are feared. Physical entry into the fade is impossible without extraordinary means (and the last time that happened, the transgressors screwed things up real bad.)

The obstacle course created for the entrance exam to WIT in Quest for Glory II strongly resembles the trope picture. Only there's no city and the road is more flat.

Fallen London plays this one for nightmares with the Iron Republic, Hell's embassy on the Neath. The only law here is that there are no laws, no tyrants. This includes the laws of chance and physics, and the tyrannies of nature and logic. The lunatics who actually enjoy the place can change what little order is there by protesting it. No one enters and leaves this place unscathed, but that doesn't stop people from coming and going anyways. Your possible stint in this literally hellish place is one of the scarier parts of the whole game.

Hyrule is turned into this after Cia opens the Gate of Souls in Hyrule Warriors. Legends takes it Up to Eleven with Forsaken Fortress, which is several locations from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker that were nowhere near each other unceremoniously mashed together, with the ocean in the background abruptly cutting off in random places.

This trope is a major part of the appeal of Axe Cop, where everything that happens is driven by whatever seems cool to its six-year-old writer.

Someone in the cast of Dominic Deegan Oracle For Hire has found themselves in one of these at least once per story-arc.

Problem Sleuth is set mostly in one. There's the imaginary world, only accessible through the forts the main characters make from their desks, but the real world isn't 100% coherent either.

While the world of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is more of a World of Weirdness, The Radical Lands is a world that seems to abide primarily by a combination of Rule of Cool and Totally Radical. As it turns out, the radicalness of the Radical Lands is so powerful that some of its energy bled into another universe. Specifically, the world of Dr. McNinja, which lies right between the Radical Lands and our universe, thus explaining the mix of mundane and weirdness of the world.

Zebra Girl: The Subfusc, especially because of its inhabitants. When you have anthropomorphic psycho rabbits, nonsensical talking spiders from the moon and a flying doggy-snake thingy who is literally attracted to crucial moments, marriage proposals and other life-altering decisions, you begin to get the idea that this place is just downright bizarre. As for the location in itself, it quite obviously doesn't follow the usual laws of physic, and people there are able to float (not fly) if they let go of their concerns. There is also a place dedicated for people who feel at their lowest, adequately named "The Pit", and an healing river made by the flow of time... You get the idea.

Web Original

The three adventures at Addventure degenerate into madness very quickly, considering that they're Round Robins contributed to by thousands of various people.

The Last Year's Snow Was Falling, which gained a cult status in the USSR. About half of it is the protagonist's daydream, about as much is the protagonist irresponsibly playing with a magic wand of transformation. The rest includes horse becoming a turnip, fir trees pretending to be deciduous (so that they wouldn't be cut for the New Year) and the protagonist drowning the (fake) end credits so that "no one will be any the wiser" (or "FINs sleep with the fishes" in another translation).

Plasticine Crow, specifically the third segment Or maybe... Or maybe.... The narrators are trying to recall the story as they are telling it, the visuals reflect that. A crow keeps becoming a dog, then a cow, then a crow again. A temperate forest becomes tropical. A pound of cheese fits in an airmail envelope. And a janitor hatches out of an ostrich egg.

"The Magicks of Megas-Tu''. The planet Megas-Tu is totally chaotic, and the only order is that imposed by its residents, the Magicks. Because of the time they spent on Earth, the things they create resemble those from Earth's past.

The so-called "Mad Planet" in "The Jihad" may not technically violate any physical laws, but it undergoes constant radical geophysical changes combined with unpredictable weather.

The main setting crosses over into this often, leaving the established D&D-inspired setting for places like Lumpy Space and the Crystal Dimension, often with little warning. Even while staying in the Land of Ooo proper, random weirdness is often the order of the day — kingdoms of living candy, slime people, fire elementals and people made out of breakfast foods, flying rainbow unicorns that only speak Korean, wizards and princesses for every random concept, robots that throw never-ending pies, giants that wear barns, two-headed psychic war elephants...

The Nightosphere, a hellish world where Marceline's Eldritch Abomination father resides, is explicitly stated to thrive off chaos. Most of Marceline's dad's job (which also became Marceline's job when she briefly wore his evil amulet) involved ruling over their realm like an Obstructive Bureaucrat, dishing out pointless rules and cruel tricks on apathetic and confused demons.

This is what Equestria becomes under Discord's influence, he being the embodiment of strife and disharmony. Features include cotton candy clouds that rain chocolate, corn popping while still on the plant, and the rabbits that feed on the giant apples fed by the rain growing long deer legs. And that's just after the opening credits. Soon enough he's got day and night switching every few minutes, chunks of land flying around upside-down, the sky turning green and then purple, flying earth ponies, giant houses of cards, roads turning into soap... in the Season 5 finale, in one of the Bad Future alternate timelines, Discord has Equestria still under his rule, and has made Princess Celestia and Princess Luna into his personal clowns to torture for eternity in payback for their original defeat and imprisonment of him centuries prior.

In season 5 we see Discord's own Pocket Dimension where he's made his home, and no surprise, it's even more extreme. The Alien Sky is a mix of constantly shifting blue and purple, the few pieces of land are floating in chunks and come in colors and patters that soil and grass have no business coming in, the gravity is largely optional and inconsistent, and some very weird fauna is seen flying around or lurking on the floating islands.

Discord's actual house is rather tame in comparison, though it still has some weirdness, like furniture on the ceiling and upside-down stairs that lead to nowhere. It's also in the little details, like the window cleaner leaving wetness behind rather than removing it, or bunny-shaped dust bunnies sitting under the couch. When Discord washes dishes, he does it in reverse — the dishes go into the sink clean and come out dirty.

Discord's house reappears in Season 7, when he invites Fluttershy over for tea. Its weirdness has visibly grown, with the house now including features like an upside-down volcano on the ceiling and swirling purple portal to... somewhere in the center of the floor. In his rush to make everything more normal for her, he organizes the realm of chaos, and this starts to make him disappear, because a being and realm of chaos cannot survive with too much harmony. It takes Fluttershy re-disorganizing everything again to save him from vanishing out of existence.

Miseryville in Jimmy Two-Shoes. Every individual in the town is a Cartoon Creature and the sky and water are red for no apparent reason despite being blue elsewhere. Those are among the least conspicuous aspects. Completely justified though as Miseryville is strongly implied to be Hell (or something akin to a cartoon version of it) with the Cartoon Creatures being demons and monsters, and the "water" is really just a case of Lava is Boiling Kool-Aid. Word of God even says that all the one-off bizarreness in the show is created by Lucius Heinous VII's immense reality warping powers.

Once he finally gains a physical form, Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls proceeds to unleash Weirdmageddon; eldritch monsters roam the streets attacking any human in sight, bubbles of pure madness float through town, everything is on fire at some point or another, and Bill raises a giant black pyramid/castle above the town from which he can rule it all. He eventually plans to spread his chaos across the world, and eventually the entire universe.

Real Life

Dreams. You could be in the strangest, oddest, most bizarre circumstances of your entire life, and yet you just accept it all as completely normal. This can be played around with in lucid dreaming, where you're aware that you're in a dream, and shape it to your will. It's still a World of Chaos, but now you're in control.

Hallucinations, especially drug-induced.

Any story and/or larger-scale art created by small children, as they understand some things (things fall, the sky is up, people meet, etc.) but not larger-scale connections. If they attempt to create something big, they will inadvertently just throw in elements they know randomly... even if the world, stories, animals etc. don't work that way. This explains for example Axe Cop.

While still adhering to the rules of physics, NASA and other agencies have found planets that are as close to this trope in Real Life as possible. One of them for example is so hot that its atmosphere contains liquid silicates and also has winds raging at over 500 kilometers per hour. In other words, on that planet it rains molten glass sideways.

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